Status: 06/28/2022 10:49 a.m
A 101-year-old man has been sentenced to five years in prison for being an accessory to murder during the Nazi era. According to the judges, Josef S. was involved in mass murders as a concentration camp guard in Sachsenhausen.
A former concentration camp guard has been sentenced to five years in prison for being an accessory to murder. The Neuruppin district court found the 101-year-old Josef S. guilty of aiding and abetting murder and attempted murder. With the sentence, the judges followed the request of the public prosecutor’s office.
This accused S. of being involved in 3,500 murders in the Sachsenhausen Nazi concentration camp. There he worked from 1942 to 1945 as an SS guard. S. is the oldest suspected Nazi perpetrator to date who had to defend himself before a German criminal court. In the trial, he had denied to the last that he had been a guard in the concentration camp.
process was on the brink
The process started in October last year. He had to be suspended several times because the accused was ill and was at times even completely on the brink. For organizational reasons, the hearings were conducted at the defendant’s place of residence in Brandenburg/Havel.
Prosecutors had asked for five years in prison for the man. Co-plaintiff representative Thomas Walther pleaded for a prison sentence of several years, which should not be less than five years.
The defense had asked for an acquittal. According to the case law of the Federal Court of Justice, being on guard duty in a concentration camp alone is not sufficient for a conviction, said defense attorney Stefan Waterkamp. Concrete acts of assistance were not proven to the accused. He had announced that he would appeal the impending prison sentence. The Federal Court of Justice would then have to deal with his case again.
What S. was accused of
According to the indictment, the trial involved the shooting of prisoners and Soviet prisoners of war and the murder of prisoners with poison gas. In addition, the court dealt with the killing of prisoners by creating and maintaining hostile conditions in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The former concentration camp guard was not accused of having murdered himself.
Proceedings against a former secretary in the Stutthof concentration camp near Gdansk are also currently underway in the Itzehoe district court.